Chapter FiveWhy on Earth Are We Staring at Raisins?

Linda Kantora

When I was invited to teach in the executive MBA (EMBA) program at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (GSB), I was at once elated and nervous. For the previous eleven years, I had been teaching Jon Kabat-Zinn’s (2000) eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, and I had observed its impact firsthand: that the simple capacity to pay attention in the present moment with both sensitivity and kindness can shift how we relate to ourselves and others.

While teaching mindfulness-based stress reduction to the general public over those years, I often asked myself what the impact would be if business leaders had a greater capacity for mindfulness. ...

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